Conventional food cooking stations, such as, for example, egg or similar cooking stations, conventionally employed within fast-food establishments for forming eggs or pancakes for various breakfast food items, normally comprise fixed templates integrally formed within the cooking surfaces of the egg or similar cooking stations. These fixed templates may define, for example, circular-shaped recesses into which raw eggs or pancake batter are deposited. The eggs or batter are then cooked to the desired degree and withdrawn from the templates whereby, for example, the eggs will comprise perfectly rounded cooked eggs, ideal for deposition atop an English muffin, bagel, or the like, or similarly shaped pancakes, so as to serve as a desirable breakfast food item. The operational drawback with the use of such cooking stations resides in the fact that the recesses, into which the raw eggs or pancake batter is deposited for cooking, are fixedly formed as integral parts of the fixed templates, and the templates, in turn, comprise fixed integral parts of the food station. Hence, such cooking stations only permit one predetermined configuration or shape to be achieved for the end use food product, however, different food establishments may desire differently formed or shaped food products for their different breakfast food items, or a particular food establishment may desire differently shaped or configured food products for its multiple food items, such as, for example, differently shaped or configured food items for different food items comprising its breakfast menu, or differently shaped or configured food items for different food items comprising its lunch menu, and/or differently shaped or configured food items comprising its dinner menu. Obviously, it can be readily appreciated that with such conventional cooking stations, a particular food establishment, or different food establishments, would have to invest substantial funds to purchase multiple cooking stations, having the differently shaped templates integrally incorporated therein, so as to be capable of producing differently shaped end use cooked food items.
A need therefore exists for new and improved cooking station apparatus that can provide food cooking stations with the desired flexibility, whereby predeterminedly different shapes can be imparted to the end-use cooked food items as may be desired, while only requiring the use of a single cooking station.